Official movie poster for Vidas paralelas, 2008.

Parallel Lies?Perus Cultural Memory Battles Go International

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Cynthia e. Milton | Universit de Montral
Vidas paralelas. Directed by Roco Llad. Spanish with English subtitles. 100 minutes. Peru,
2008.
Last June in Montreal, the annual Ibero-Latin American film festival, Festivalissimo,
dedicated a special screening to the Peruvian film Vidas Paralelas(Parallel Lives,2008) by
Roco Llad.Festival coordinators invited the director general of the film festival and the
Peruvian consular general to introduce the film, and invited the rector and three of his
colleagues from the Universidad Alas Peruanas (Peruvian Wings University) that produced
the film to attend. After the film there was a short question period, followed by a wine
reception. Having seen the previous years international success La Teta Asustada(The Milk of
Sorrow, 2009), by Claudia Llosa, that won the Berlin Golden Bear for best foreign film, I
expected another cinematic accounting of the war years along the same lines. Yet, Vidas
Paralelas film recounts a different vision of the war, the tragedy of the abandoned soldier.
The program description of this film states that Vidas Paralelas raises controversy
and that it is based on a true story of two childhood friends who were separated by an
attack on their highland town (Ayacucho) by the terrorist group Sendero Luminoso(SL, Shining
Path). This tragic event led to each adolescent taking a different road in life: Felipe became a
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military man, Sixto became a commander in SL, and they met later in life in combat. The drama
of the film is heightened by a twist not mentioned in the printed description. Once the war is
over and the SL captured, the remnants of Shining Path disperse into the jungle, Sixto among
them. Fate is not as nice to Felipe, who ends up standing trial, accused of the death and
disappearance of a SL member (Mara Nia). In the absence of her corpse, and with the weight
of a truth commission report that supposedly stated Major Felipe Canos involvement in her
death, Felipe is convicted of her murder. (We find out later that she too is in the jungle with Sixto
and the others.) The arbitrariness and injustice of the Peruvian legal system leaves Felipe
abandoned by his nation, the country that he had served to protect. The film ends with a written
summary stating that during the internal conflict thousands died and that we need to know
this history in order not to repeat it.
The plot of the film seems to subtly reform Peruvian memory debates. Rather than
deny the war, this film rewrites its script, and the role of the wars opposing armed
groups (civilians appear as backdrop and self-defense groups, or ronderos, are absent). It is not
difficult to make the argument that Shining Path members were villains: the Peruvian Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, the CVR, condemns SL as responsible for 54% of the violence.
However, it is much more difficult to make the argument that the armed forces were heroes: the
CVR accords 29% and 6.6% of the documented violence to the military and police, respectively.
None of the abuses committed by the armed forces comes out in the film. The only
potential allusion to less than upstanding acts by the military is an oblique reference to
needing a pair of cholas to keep the soldiers warm at night (chola is a racist term for
Quechua-speaking women). It turns out cholas in this scene refers to hot water bottles.Vidas
Paralelas was made for a Peruvian audience and seemed to be quite a blockbuster.
Yet, while the quality of the images suggests good financing (from the Peruvian military), the
plot is strained by several overly dramatic moments and an almost comical portrayal of SL as
sex fiends that Peruvians might find the film oddly funny, rather than a cautionary tale.
The discussion after the film clarified the reasons why the Universidad de Alas Peruanas
decided to sign an agreement with the Peruvian military to make this film, their first foray into
cinematic production.During the Q&A, the rector of the Universidad Alas Peruanas stated that
this film is meant to tell the other side of the story, that is the story not told by other films that
show the military as bad guys, the pro-senderista films, and the truth commission. In
reference to the truth commission, the rector said, los que forman la CVR han sido muy
parecidos en su ideologa a Sendero (members of CVR are similar in ideology to SL), and
he stated that todays NGOs are Shining Path (son senderistas). The rector went on to
inform the audience that thousands of military men are now languishing in prison as the
terrorists are being let out. (The former president Alberto Fujimori is now in prison for human
rights abuses, serving a 25-year sentence, the maximum penalty possible. He is, along with less
well-known figures, perhaps the inspiration for the films Major Cano character. As for the
released terrorists, the rector may have had in mind the American Lori Berenson who had
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recently been granted parole. The rectors remarks bring us back to the 1990s of Alberto
Fujimori, a period in which to speak of human rights was equated with terrorism. By fting this
film, the festival organizers and the Peruvian consular general, perhaps unwittingly, supported
the films and the rectors dichotomy of a cinematic field as consisting of pro versus anti
SL/armed forces films.
Sitting in the theatre with some of the audience aghast at the rectors comparison of the
CVR and NGOs to Shining Path and some of the audience in agreement with the rector, I
felt as though a microcosm of Perus present memory battles was taking place here in
Montreals theatre eXcentris.
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Two memory camps (not to be mistaken for the rectors
dichotomy) were at work in the room: those in favor of the truth commission which attempted an
inclusive inquiry into the internal war, and those who wanted not to overtly ignore or to forget
what had happened, but rather to actively rewrite the past into one where the military were
untarnished heroes, and where the root causes of the warpoverty, racism, and
exclusionremain unaddressed.
By attending international film festivals, the rector may have been trying to counteract the
international impact of Claudia Llosas film, thus, asking us unfairly to equate Teta Asustada
with Vidas Paralelasas parallel interventions into the past. That is, Perus memory battles
have gone international, using film festivals as a forum. Film and art in general is the
present battlefield for memory in Peru and abroad. The rewriting of the war years by the
present government is yielding a subtle narrative (more subtle than that of Vidas Paralelas):
yes, there was an atrocious war that cost many innocent lives and is a national tragedy. Yet,
there are no lessons to be learned, other than not to repeat it. The quasi-denialist rewriting of
the war years is one that seeks to reaffirm the armed forces without reforming the institution that
seeks to pretend a democracy and a peace that does not acknowledge the thousands of
common graves upon which Peruvians walk, and the root causes of poverty, racism and
exclusion that lay the groundwork for continued discontent.
Cynthia E. Milton works on history in the Andes, in particular on historical representations
of violence in contemporary Peru and perceptions of poverty in colonial Ecuador. She is the
author ofThe Many Meanings of Poverty: Colonialism, Social Compacts, and Assistance in 18th
Century Ecuador (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), winner of the Bolton-Johnson
Prize of the Conference on Latin American History for the best work on Latin America
published in 2007, a co-editor ofThe Art of Truth-telling about Authoritarian Rule
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005) and ofCurating Difficult Knowledge: violent
pasts in public places. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming). She has written several
articles on historical clarification in post-Shining Path Peru. She is an associate professor and
Canada Research Chair in Latin American History in the Department of History at the Universit
de Montral.
Notes
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1
I wish to thank Benny Chueca, Alberto Vergara, and Alfredo Villar for their discussions on this
film.
2
Some of this debate is evident in the posted comments on the YouTube trailer.

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